


A Model Patient

by sevtacular



Category: Holby City
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, Injury Recovery, Secret Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-04-25
Packaged: 2019-04-27 22:38:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14435616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevtacular/pseuds/sevtacular
Summary: Only Sian knows about the woman who occupies Serena's fantasies.





	A Model Patient

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea where this AU came from. It's just a lot of lusting after Bernie in uniform. Huge thanks to @Regency for cheerleading and encouraging me to finally write Sian (and get this fic to 4k).

“Sian!” Serena’s voice rises an octave as she returns to her room to find her best friend rummaging in her bedside cabinet. “What are you doing?!”  
“Oh do be quiet, Rena! I’m just seeing what naughty toys you already do have so I don’t duplicate something for your birthday…” Sian’s eyes twinkle as she pulls items from the cabinet. “The standard model, two bottles of – oh my, three bottles. We are prepared Little Miss Serena Ballerina… Some tissues, lipstick and… ‘Join the armed forces today!” Serena, why in the ever-loving universe do you have a military recruitment flyer in your bedside cabinet?” Sian holds the piece of laminated paper curiously. Serena shuts her bedroom door and tries her very best to camouflage into it.  
“Sian…” The tone of voice she was hoping for was authoritative and persuasive. She’s actually ended up with embarrassed and pleading.  
“Rena, please tell me you are not thinking of joining the forces.” Sian’s brow is pulled tight and Serena suddenly realises that her friend is concerned. Thrown together by the shared pain of horrendously long degree programmes (medicine for Serena, law for Sian), they’ve weathered a lot together. Serena laughs at the thought of joining the army.  
“God no, Sian. I just happened to have it lying around.”  
“Nonsense. You never just leave things lying around. You sort takeaway leaflets into piles and recycle the ones we don’t need. Serena, I’ll ask you once more: Why do you have a military recruitment leaflet?”  
Serena takes a deep breath and reminds herself that she can tell Sian absolutely anything. She sighs.  
“I kept it because parts of it are… Useful.”  
“Useful?” Sian’s tone indicates she thinks Serena might be a little bit mad.  
“I like a uniform, okay?” Serena breathes out all in a rush. Sian’s face lights up.  
“Oh, oh, oh, Rena ballerina! A uniform fetish hmm? Let’s have a look shall we and see which soldier hunks you’ve been getting yourself off to!” 

Sian begins to flick through the leaflet and Serena cannot help but feel more than a little bit mortified at the fact that her best friend is judging who she imagines when she’s got a hand between her legs.  
“This one?” Sian shows a picture of a man with bulging muscles wearing fatigues.  
“No.”  
“Really? Why not? I would.”  
“You would do anything with a substantial package between his legs.” Serena raises an eyebrow at her friend.  
“That’s true. This one?” She offers a picture of a man in a beret fixing a truck, oil and grease coating his arms.  
“No.”  
“Hmm… That’s about all the good men in it. Half the booklet – and the front cover – is this blonde woman in fatigues. Are they trying to get women involved or something? I mean, she is pretty butch looking I’ll give her that, Re-” Sian stops talking when she realises Serena has turned a startling shade of red and is now studying the ceiling intently.  
“Wait, Rena, you’re telling me – her?!” Sian gasps, and Serena nods timidly, scared of the response her friend will give. “Well, Serena, you’ve got taste, I’ll give you that much.” Serena breathes out gratefully, glad she hasn’t lost her greatest friendship. 

Sian flicks through the booklet once more, before propping it up on Serena’s pillow, the front cover photo of the blonde soldier staring out at her, smouldering a little and turning Serena on a lot without the woman even being there in person. Serena looks back at her friend to find her raising an eyebrow questioningly.  
“Hey, Rena. If you’re into blondes, do I have a chance?”  
“Oh, bugger off Sian!” Serena throws a cushion at her, relieved that the situation has passed. It actually feels a little freeing to have somebody know. 

Sian gets up to leave the room, patting Serena cheekily on the rear as she passes.  
“Let me know if you change your mind, Rena. I can always make time for you.” Serena laughs.  
“But of course.” Sian winks at her. “Oh, and Sian?” Serena’s voice is back to being a little bit shy, a little bit scared.  
“Yes?”  
“Don’t tell anyone about my, um… Preferences, will you?” Serena fiddles with her necklace, the one her father bought her on her 21st birthday. Sian pats her on the arm comfortingly.  
“Don’t worry Serena, I wouldn’t dream of it. I have hunky bartenders to seduce, anyway.”

As Sian saunters off out for the night, Serena locks her bedroom door and looks at the leaflet lying on her pillow. Well, a little self-indulgence never did anyone any harm…

-

Serena keeps the recruitment leaflet. In fact, she adds to it. In a box in the back of her wardrobe she has the original flyer alongside two further recruitment pamphlets and a poster she stole off the common room noticeboard when nobody was around to see her take the A3 action shot of a certain blonde soldier poster girl. 

She keeps them for far too long, for some reason unable to throw them out. When she confesses this to Sian one night as they approach graduation her best friend laughs into her cocktail.  
“Well, you’ve shared a lot together,” is the lawyer’s only response.

When Serena divorces Edward, she finds herself getting lonely in the evenings. When her imagination fails to help her one evening, she digs out the cardboard box of university paraphernalia and finds the items she needs. Staring at the woman’s face she tries to imagine how she’s aged, thinks this beautiful soldier will have aged well. And as she shivers and spasms round her fingers, she doesn’t feel the slightest bit of guilt. This poster girl has just given her more satisfaction then Edward did in the later stages of their relationship.

It’s only when Serena realises that her biggest regular sexual stimulation is now from fantasising over a woman she has never met and never will meet that Serena begins to seek company again. Robbie is available and interested and capable of scratching her itch. He doesn’t have rippling muscles and dirty blonde hair though.

Jason arrives and Robbie leaves and Serena is left alone again. She tries very hard not to think of the poster girl from her uni days. She manages pretty well, and Sian tells her she’s met one of Serena’s old flames at a networking event in Stepney. Serena says she’s too busy to meet the woman, and Sian pouts, says she thought Serena might be pleased at the news. Serena doesn’t respond.  
“Someday Rena you’re gonna need to get yourself back out there again. I know I’m about to show an Italian waiter just what he’s been missing out on when he sees what a good job my surgeon did to my bosom.”

-

Major Berenice Wolfe, trauma surgeon, makes quite the first appearance at Holby City. She arrives in the back of a military jeep fresh from a helicopter from Afghanistan. Raf goes to treat her with Guy Self and Oliver Valentine. Serena is too busy keeping AAU in check to really consider anything past the woman’s exemplary credentials in the field of trauma medicine. 

It’s only later on in the day that she’s called down to Darwin on a consult that she thinks she’ll glance into the side room to see just what a state the legendary woman is in. As soon as she catches a glimpse, she freezes in the doorway. The woman is asleep but she looks familiar. It’s bizarre, Serena thinks. She knows she’s never met Major Berenice Wolfe in her life but she swears she’s seen those cheekbones before, that dirty blonde hair. A porter pushes past with a wheelchair and snaps Serena from her daze. She heads off to her consult and vows to think no more about it.

-

Thinking no more about it doesn’t last very long when she goes out for drinks with Sian the following evening.  
“What’s got you so distracted, Rena?”  
“Hmm? Sorry Sian, what were you saying?” Serena shakes her head to try and focus.  
“What’s got you more distracted than a man when presented with my bosom?” Sian pushes out her chest proudly to emphasise her point. A passing waiter nearly drops a bowl of soup.  
“There’s a patient,” Serena begins. “She’s a famous trauma surgeon who’s been flown back to Holby City for medical treatment after being injured in Afghanistan. I’ve never met her but she looks familiar. I’m trying to work out why.” Serena sighs. She feels like she’s close but can’t finish her thoughts. Sian raises a plucked eyebrow.  
“Is she attractive?”  
“What does that have to do with it?” Serena wonders just what Sian is playing at. Berenice Wolfe is attractive, as it happens, though obviously Serena only saw her in a hospital gown and not fatigues… Serena’s face freezes as she realises just why Major Berenice Wolfe looks oh so familiar.  
“No…” She whispers into her wine glass.  
“It’s her, isn’t it?” Sian asks. Serena flushes. The woman she’s spent hours upon hours fantasising over is none other than Major Berenice Wolfe, one of the world’s greatest trauma surgeons. Sian’s smile is one which Serena knows means trouble. “Well, that’s a turn up for the books! Go and get her, Rena! Let her show you that the reality is even better than the fantasy.” Sian winks and the same waiter as earlier freezes, enamoured by the effervescent lawyer. Serena smiles to herself.  
“Maybe I will. Thanks Sian, I’ll leave you here to finish up what you’ve started.” With only the slightest nod in the direction of the waiter so Sian catches her meaning, Serena drains her glass of Shiraz and puts on her coat, walking out of the restaurant with her thoughts scattered like feathers in the breeze. Perhaps she should try to get to know Major Berenice Wolfe a little better…

-

 

Bernie isn’t stupid. She knows that that attractive brunette consultant doesn’t work on Darwin. She also knows she’s been past her room more times than Bernie can count in the past couple of hours. Bernie wonders if she’s waiting for her to be awake, since Bernie keeps slamming her eyes shut and breathing evenly whenever the woman walks past. Only one way to find out, Bernie thinks.

-

The next time Serena walks past the side-room (just another quick trip to Darwin to check on equipment, of course), the soldier is trying to sit up in bed.  
“Here, let me!” Serena dashes in and helps Major Wolfe to a sitting position, trying to focus on something other than the clear physique of the other woman.  
“Thanks,” the soldier replies. “Now, what do you want?” She looks at Serena and the vascular surgeon stumbles. Because what does she actually want from Major Wolfe? Well, nothing she can say on her first meeting. The Major is looking at her though, practically scorching her with her gaze, so Serena takes a deep breath.  
“How about a drink?”  
Well, sometimes you just have to be a little forward with your invitations.

-

“Serena, what exactly are you doing in here?” Jac stands in the doorway of the room, her gaze icy enough to pierce through a weaker person.  
“I was just chatting to Berenice, here.”  
“Bernie.” The woman husks from the bed. Serena looks at her and they share a smile. Perhaps for too long. Jac clears her throat.  
“Right, well. Could you go and do your job and return during visiting hours for more puppy gazes. I need to run some tests on my patient.” She moves over to Bernie, who sighs.  
“Go on, Serena. I’ll see you later?” The last part is a question. Serena nods and tangles their fingers.  
“As soon as I clock off I’ll be here.”  
“Leave, Campbell!”  
Jac always has had a way with words.

-

“As far as first dates go, sat in a hospital bed drinking bottled water isn’t exactly romantic.” Bernie chuffs back a laugh as she sips from the bottle Serena has brought her.  
“Hey! That’s ice-cold water straight from the staffroom fridge, I think you’ll find.” Serena smiles at her warmly and reaches out to thread her fingers through the soldier’s, her insides flip flopping when Berenice (no - Bernie, Serena keeps reminding herself) squeezes gently and smiles.  
“I do apologise. But when I’m finally discharged from here I’m hoping there’s something stronger on the cards.” Bernie winks at her then, and Serena clenches her thighs.  
“You can bet on it, soldier.”

-

Serena spends a lot of time in Bernie’s recovery room. She always comes in an hour before her shift is due to start to spend time with the army medic and goes to see her after her shift is done. They have countless lunch dates where they share sandwiches from Pulses and bottled water. Bernie begins to laugh more and wince less as she heals, leading to time spend sat on the edge of the hospital bed holding hands and trading quips. It’s refreshing, Serena thinks, to have someone who she can talk to so freely, who flirts right back with her, who is the most stunning woman Serena has ever seen. 

-

It's all going well, so well. Never outside of radiography has the air in a hospital room had such a charged atmosphere. Bernie was originally frustrated at the prospect of a long stay in hospital due to nobody to look after her at home (no home, if she’s being honest, she just usually rents a cheap place or a hotel room for a month or so whenever she’s back off tour, has never really settled past student digs and army bunks and temporary homes). Now she relishes the time she spends in hospital, in Serena’s workplace, thinks that somehow the universe has made things better by sending her to Holby City, to the place that this woman calls home.  
Serena, for her part, is in a state of complete contentment. She has never really believed in karma or fate or any other such silly notion, it’s ridiculous when she spends her days trying to physically defeat death on behalf of various people. But she thinks somewhere out there, there must be a higher power or force who sent Bernie to her after all these years of pining. Having the poster girl you had a teenage (well, early adulthood) crush on turn up at your place of work is too good to be true, a notion which would never realistically exist outside the realms of fiction. Still, she thinks, she may as well live in the moment. Now Bernie is with her, nothing can possibly go wrong.

-

It turns out that something can possibly go wrong. That something being a someone. A someone with whitened teeth and surgical enhancements who goes by the name of Sian. Serena sometimes wonders why she ever thought the woman was a good addition to her life.  
Serena is sat in Bernie’s room one sunny spring day. The sun is shining through the small window which overlooks the carpark below and both surgeons are sat in Bernie’s bed, holding hands and talking quietly about anything and nothing as their fingers trace secret subconscious messages onto one another’s skin.

“Well, well, well, isn’t this all cosy?” Serena’s head snaps up as soon as she hears the voice to see her oldest friend with her platinum blonde hair and a business suit worth hundreds of pounds sashay in and sit in the visitor’s chair, legs crossed and eyes twinkling.  
“Sian…” Serena wishes her voice wasn’t so pleading, wishes that Sian’s eyes didn’t contain the laughter of a thousand hyenas. Naughty and dangerous and supportive all at once.  
“Rena darling! And Major Berenice Wolfe, I do hope your recovery is proving to be speedy.” Sian is cordiality personified, but Serena knows her too well, and her eyes are telling a different story, filled with mirth and delight and Serena knows she’s imagining the university recruitment leaflet, knows she’s judging Serena’s judgement of the trauma surgeon.

Bernie looks thoroughly poleaxed, her eyebrows furrowed and her nose wrinkled as she looks Sian up and down. Eventually, she speaks.  
“I’m sorry, have we met?”  
“In a way,” Sian replies cryptically, her face giving nothing away. Serena knows this is why her best friend makes such a good lawyer, her ability to hide behind a mask of professionalism even when she’s thoroughly amused. Sian is able to lead someone down whatever path she wants them to go on until they believe they were the ones who decided on the journey. If she hadn’t become a high-flying lawyer, Serena thinks Sian might have made her money as a professional poker player or con artist. As it is, Sian is now staring Bernie down in a match of strong, blonde women. 

Sian breaks first.  
“I saw you around quite a lot at university, even almost walked in on Rena here having some alone time with you more than once,” Sian’s grin is wicked and Serena tries very hard to hate her. Instead, she splutters and grips Bernie’s hand tightly.  
“Sian!”  
“Oh, lighten up a little, darling! God, how I need to get you drunk enough to bring Serena Ballerina back sometime.” Serena glares half-heartedly at Sian and Bernie coughs awkwardly beside her.  
“Um, I have no idea what’s going on, please could somebody explain?”  
“It’s nothing,” Serena says and Sian looks at her, one perfectly shaped eyebrow raised.  
“It’s everything.” Her gaze softens as she looks at her closest friend, before turning to Bernie, her fierce lawyer mask slipping back into place. “What I am saying, Major Wolfe, is that Serena here has waited for you for a long time. In that time, she has had numerous disasters called relationships which both she and I are tired of. Serena deserves nothing short of the absolute best.” Her voice lowers a pitch and she leans forward slightly, a lioness going in for the kill. “And if you do not live up to these very high expectations, or in any way at all hurt her, I will come for you.” Her voice lowers again. “And I will ruin you.” Sian straightens and smiles sweetly. “Are we clear, Major Wolfe?”

It is a testament to Bernie’s personality that she meets Sian’s icy gaze with a cool one of her own. She squeezes Serena’s hand and nods.  
“Crystal.”

They don’t mention the other thing again, but Serena knows it’s only a matter of time before Bernie finds out.

 

-

 

Eventually, Bernie begins to prepare for discharge. She’s still got a long way to go, but she’s well enough to live unassisted now. Bernie is just excited at the thought of leaving Holby City Hospital. Her only problem is that she doesn’t have a home. Serena wonders about offering for Bernie to live with her, but there’s Jason to consider alongside the fact that she and Bernie haven’t really known each other for very long in the scheme of things. 

In the end, they agree on a compromise. Bernie will stay with Serena for a week or two once discharged. In that time, she and Serena will find her a more permanent dwelling. It’s a scheme that seems to work best for all of them.

-

Serena is of the opinion that Bernie living with her is nothing short of tremendous. They like similar television shows and they never run out of things to talk about. Bernie gets on with Jason better than most people do. Serena has noticed that her nephew has taken to Bernie rather quickly, bonding over World’s Strongest Man and Mary Beard. They drink tea together in the morning and snuggle down together at night, Serena’s head upon Bernie’s chest as they drift into slumber. In short, it’s everything Serena had ever hoped for and more.

-

After Bernie’s osteo tells her that she has progressed substantially, they begin to indulge in other activities. And those are much better than Serena could ever have imagined (and she has imagined this a lot over the years). 

Sian calls Serena one day and Serena can’t help but smile down the line as Sian asks how things are going with the army medic.  
“They’re very good, thank you.”  
“She’s very good, I take it?”  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  
“Is she better than you imagined? Reality better than fantasy like I said?”  
“…”  
“Well?”  
“Yes Sian, she’s brilliant.”

-

It’s Sian who points out another thing Serena has been ignoring a few weeks later.  
“So, have you given up the pretence of her only being a temporary fixture to your household?”  
“She’s not recovered enough yet to manage alone, we’ll look again in a week or so.”  
“No you won’t.”  
“Well, maybe in a month.”  
“If you say so, Rena darling.”

Serena can practically hear Sian’s eyeroll down the line. The worst part is Serena knows her friend is right. She doesn’t want Bernie to leave. And she doesn’t think Bernie wants to find somewhere new either.

-

Things change a month later. Serena is in the sitting room, reclining on the sofa while Bernie moves some of her boxes (she’s finally emptying the storage unit she fills every time she goes on tour) into the bedroom cupboards.

Serena’s just beginning to doze in the summer heat when Bernie appears in the doorway, a well-used cardboard box in her arms.  
“Serena?”  
“Mmm?”  
“Where did you get these?”

She holds up a collection of papers, glossy leaflets and posters all screaming for people to join the army. Her own younger face staring moodily out towards Serena, who promptly buries her face in a cushion.  
“Oh, God.”

The sofa dips and Serena removes the cushion to find Bernie looking down at her questioningly. She takes a deep breath.  
“I got them when I was at uni. I may have… Appreciated the model on them.” Bernie’s lips quirk in the hint of a grin. Serena continues. “It was a hell of a shock to see the same model bundled up in a bed in my hospital.”

Bernie looks down at the papers and flicks through them.  
“You know, I’d almost forgotten I ever did these. It was good money for a few shots. I didn’t realise they’d used quite so many of me though.” Serena laughs.  
“Well they gave me plenty of variety to choose from when evenings got lonely,” she raises a flirtatious eyebrow and Bernie gulps. “Love a woman in uniform, I do.”  
“Oh really?” Bernie murmurs, placing the brochures on the table and crawling over Serena on the sofa.  
“Oh yes,” Serena moans as Bernie’s tongue traces a pathway from her cleavage to the back of her ear.  
“Well then, it’s a good job I just brought my uniform out of storage isn’t it? Both of them, actually.”

Serena’s responding moan as Bernie nibbles down on her ear is loud enough to wake the entire street. It’s a good job Jason’s at Alan’s until Thursday.

-  
Serena has always liked a woman in uniform. She has always liked a specific woman in uniform. A woman who she thought would remain wholly in the confines of her imagination (and drunken conversations with Sian). It turns out that the woman Serena has spent a lifetime fantasising about is none other than Major Berenice Wolfe of the Royal Army Medical Corps, one of Britain’s (and the world’s) finest trauma surgeons. She’s older now than when she was first photographed to encourage new recruits. But she still cuts a fine figure in fatigues.

And, as the woman in question walks towards Serena and presses her back into the wooden door of her bedroom, Serena will happily admit that reality is even better than the fantasy. Oh, and Bernie’s not going to be moving out any time soon either, so she may as well be accurate and call it their bedroom. It looks like a certain lawyer was right on both counts. Not that Serena is going to be telling Sian anytime soon, she’ll only show off about it.

**Author's Note:**

> if you enjoyed this let me know, it helps to keep my muse going. thanks.


End file.
